Being woken up from her stupor in front of the still blabbering TV, does not make Chae Ryung the most gracious of hosts. She stares at So with her mouth agape until Soo finds the good sense to pull her away under the pretence of making arrangements.

Returning with an armful of freshly laundered blankets, Soo finds him examining her mini herb garden. She dumps them in the sofa and slides the glass doors to join him outside. The cool night air rushes in scented waves and Soo inhales gratefully before catching So’s eye.

“Excuse her strange behavior,” she tells him, referring to Chae Ryung. “She is awkward around strangers.” So shrugs dismissing her vicarious excuse. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you cold?” She adds the last in an afterthought repressing a shiver that runs down her spine.

“Have you ever been in a pool in the fall?” He gives her an amused glance and chuckles at her look. “There are only a handful around here that has proper temperature control.”

“You have a bad habit of filtering questions Mr. Hwang,” she replies as she kneels to pick a fallen yellowed leaf from the grove of flowering chrysanthemums. Absentmindedly she runs her finger tips over the nodding blossoms and looks up to find him watching. “To choose the part you want to answer and ignore the rest.”

“I don’t know about bad habits, my PR manager was rather impressed.” He tells her offering a hand to pull her back to her feet. For a moment So indulges himself in holding her hand, her skin soft and supple under his hardened fingers. Would she be as soft all over? A stray thought frightens him and he lets his fingers slip gliding over the back of her palm down to the tips of her fingers. “I’m trying to figure you out Miss Hae Soo tell me, do you tend to this garden yourself?”

He replies to her question with a question of his own and her laughter patters through the scented air.

“And what have you figured out?”

So shrugs and looks around himself. “You are not what you appear to be.”

Her smile dims and she shifts uncomfortably. His gaze rakes over her as if peeling off that ill - fitting skin layer by layer.

“I’m not sure what gives you the impression…” she lets her words trail off.

“Well - for one, this is not what I’d imagine as a lady’s garden.”

“What would you imagine then?” Her pulse hums strangely against her skin and her breath comes out in smokey puffs in the chilly night.

“Orchids, roses, of exotic varieties.”

“Oh but I do have them -” she grins despite herself. “I have orchids you won’t see anywhere else.” She thinks of Meyung Hee’s green house and its imported flowers only for a moment.

“You might,” So concedes easily. “But you don’t adore them as much.”
“You have a terrifying insight Mr. Hwang. They belonged to my cousin. This house used to be hers, we lived together then.” She confesses on a whim and feels the weight lifting off her shoulders and giggles. “You should have been a detective.”

“Do you have secrets Hae Soo?” There is a tint of laughter in his tone and she thinks offhandedly that it’s a tone that matches moonless nights and whispering woods. His voice gives her name an intoxicating quality of old dark charms that leaves her heart thundering in her ears.

Why don’t you find out for yourself?” She tells him with a feigned bravery and walks back inside, before her own heartbeat drowns away her voice of rationality. There is something wickedly tempting about Hwang So, she thinks helplessly. A dangerous man who has no idea of the power at his fingertips.

**

“You should not trust him Agassi,” Chae Ryung’s words are laced with doubt as the comb shifts through her hair. Soo winces when she feels the pull of a tangle and at the distrust in her tone at the same time. Chae Ryung had started to brush her hair when she was recovering in the hospital and somehow has made a ritual out of it. Her fingers replaces the comb as she untangles the knots gently, her voice soothing. “He is not as pure hearted as master Wook.”

“You see what you want to see Chae Ryung. What do you know of either of them?” Soo narrows her eyes in the mirror and watches how the younger girl drops her eyes in defeat.

“He is a man who betrayed his brother for glory,” she insists. “Haven’t you heard of their famous older brother? Soo’s eyes lift with surprise and Chae Ryung goes on, as her nimble fingers braids her hair. “They were both swimmers. The older was renowned until his own younger brother accused him of doping. He died a pitiful death, stripped of honor.”

“Was it real?”

“He has not been a part of their family since - would they exile their own had it been truth?”

Soo turns away, dismissing her for the night. There is poison in her sweet voice, speaking ill with so much of conviction. She wonders why? Chae Ryung was a daughter of one of the servant’s in Hwang household, before she was made her companion. Wook had arranged for that. They might have known each other from childhood. Why would she despise a man who has not even been around so long to bear any ill will for her.

She dreams of Chae Ryung that night. Chae Ryung brushing her hair just as they were used to.

“People who see his face don’t live to tell the tale.” Her words shift and echo, like whispers from a far end of a tunnel. “They say he killed every last wolf in Shinju. A man with two powerful families…”

Soo wakes up with a gasp, her own hand swathed around her throat. It is the wee hours between midnight and dawn, she switches on her nightlight knowing there is no possibility of anymore sleep. The pain of her knees return, like a dull ache of old. She rubs them with a whimper, before feeling around to find her mobile.
She thinks of hot water and a compressor that could relieve the pain and scrambles out of bed with a groan. Between aching knees and darkened stairs, her thoughts on herbs that could offer some comfort, she has forgotten the man sleeping on the sofa.

He is too big for the poor thing, she muses as she walks past to enter the kitchen, shaking her head at the stubborn line of his jaw that remains tensed even in his sleep. One of his arms folded and laying across his eyes and the knuckles of the other brushing the marble ground.

She scuffles around the kitchen without much noise and sets the water to boil. Sitting down to ease the weight off her weary knees Soo looks around for something to do. Idly, she searches the net for old stories Chae Ryung has mentioned. Soo never had any real interest for athletics. There is a lot that she does not know she realizes once the articles start to pop one by one.

She reads up on Hwang Tae of his rise and fall - or the dramatized version of the events. The brothers five years apart, had always been some sort of a legend she learns by the sensational media coverage they had always received.

He had been nineteen, Soo pauses at the thought as her finger hoovers over the play button of the video of Tae’s funeral. It is paused at a close up shot of Hwang So in his mourning attire, standing at the side of their father. He looks as if chased by ghosts, with bags under his eyes and - with a gasp she notices - a healing gash across his face.

“Read enough?” Started at his abrupt voice Soo almost drops the phone. Turning around she realizes he had been standing there for a while, probably reading over her shoulder. A muscle twitches at the corner of his mouth, and a vein throbs at his throat. his lips pressed together. Anger shines in his eyes like lightening behind a dark cloud. “Or are you still curious - Hae Soo?”

“I don’t think I’ve done something worth apologizing Hwang So,” she holds her ground, with a steady voice. When he chuckles in response there is no humour in his tone.

“Yes you should probably know what kind of a man you are harbouring in your house. So tell me, would you like to hear a personalized account? Perhaps you can relay it to your friends later - Hwang So’s sob story?”

“You have a gift at being cynical!” she snaps as she stands up. The quickness of her movement does not agree with her knees. They protest painfully twisting under her weight and losing her balance she stumbles forward.

His arms come around her in a forceful yet fluid movement thwarting her fall and pulling her against him at the same time. His heart beats as frenetically as hers, underneath the palm she has pressed against him. With a hand grabbing the end of the table he balances both of them, before looking down at her.

His breath fans over her face, fluttering her lashes when she looks up. Soo finds his eyes and feels the storm brewing in them wash over her, in wave upon wave of thundering emotion, whirling the waters of her own heart mercilessly.

“Your knees,” he asks. “What is wrong with them?”

“An old injury -” she replies in a gasp of pain as the ache prickles all over anew. When he settles her back in the chair his hands are surprisingly gentle. Their cheeks brush together briefly as he bends over to adjust her properly. He smells of cinnamon with hints of grass in the warm sunlight. Her fingers curl over his shoulder before he had moved away. “I’m sorry So..!”

She takes his name with a familiarity that startles them both. His eyes shift back to hers. Something simmers between them so potent that Soo feels she could have touched it. She holds her breath both frightened and fascinated at the unpredictability of the moment. Chae Ryung was right. He was nothing like his brother.

“I should get going.” There is a finality to his tone as So draws away. This time when he does Soo does not hold him back.

The knowlede of how much she wants to - immobilizes her with fear.